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Size effect enabling additive-free MXene ink with ultrahigh conductivity for screen printing of wireless electronics

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Abstract

Facile preparation of additive-free inks with both high viscosity and high conductivity is critical for scalable screen printing of wireless electronics, yet very challenging. MXene materials exhibit excellent conductivity and hydrophilicity, showing great potential in the field of additive-free inks for screen printing. Here, we demonstrate the synthesis of additive-free two-dimensional (2D) titanium carbide MXene inks, and realize screen-printed MXene wireless electronics for the first time. The viscosity of MXene ink is solely regulated by tuning the size of MXene nanosheet without any additives, hence rendering the printed MXene film extremely high conductivity of 1.67 × 105 S/m and fine printing resolution down to 0.05 mm on various flexible substrates. Moreover, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags fabricated using the additive-free MXene ink via screen printing exhibit stable antenna reading performance and superb flexibility. This article, thus offers a new route for the efficient, low-cost and pollution-free manufacture of printable electronics based on additive-free MXene inks.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22279097), the Hainan Provincial Joint Project of Sanya Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City (No. 520LH054), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WUT: 2021IVA66).

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  1. Shuaishuai Chen and Huaqiang Fu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Shuaishuai Chen, Huaqiang Fu, Yunfa Si, Zhe Wang, Yixue Duan, Zixin Zhang, Hao Feng & Da** He

  2. Hubei Engineering Research Center of RF-Microwave Technology and Application, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Xueyu Liu, ** He

  3. School of Science, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, China

    **n Zhao

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Chen, S., Fu, H., Si, Y. et al. Size effect enabling additive-free MXene ink with ultrahigh conductivity for screen printing of wireless electronics. Nano Res. 16, 11012–11017 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5762-3

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